Seasonal Referrals are easy internal promotion tools designed to be used multiple times per year creating the opportunity to increase your referrals leading to additional new patients. You can tie this into any national holiday, special event, or time of year! These promotions increase the fun factor and continues to remind EVERYONE in your office to be engaged with each patient both in person and on the phone. This means at every interaction you ASK for a referral. This ASK is the responsibility of EVERY TEAM MEMBER! There must be no one left behind!
PROMOTION OBJECTIVE: Schedule new patients by gathering patient referrals on the day of their appointment.
Step 1: #
Pick a holiday and choose how long to run the promotion for. We recommend that your promotion be planned AT LEAST three weeks prior to allow enough set up time and lasts anywhere from 2 – 4 weeks, but can be shorter based on the holiday. Remember to choose national holidays that have broad appeal. Daily celebrations like National Donut Day and National Knitting Day don’t count. Also, feel free to decorate the office and/or dress in a theme of the holiday to increase the holiday cheer!
MONTHLY EXAMPLES: (Not limited to the items below)
– January: New Years
– February: Valentine’s Day
– March: St. Patrick’s
– April: Easter
– May: Memorial Day/ Mother’s Day
– June: Father’s Day
– July: Fourth of July
– August: Summer Fun/ Back To School
– September: Labor Day
– October: Halloween
– November: Thanksgiving
– December: Christmas
Step 2: #
Choose your free gift! As an added bonus, you will be giving away simple gifts to all your patients! Gift examples include chocolate flowers on a stick, a flower, or small bag of themed candy… Nothing fancy… just keep it simple and FUN!! You will need to order or make enough gifts to give TWO to each patient. A philanthropic promotional card will need to be made and attached to HALF of the gifts! The promotional cards should be printed on a nice, certificate style or document style paper with the specific holiday themed design. We recommend designing and printing these through vistaprint.com. These gifts should be placed at the front desk/scheduling window to be given to the patient by the staff at the completion of their visit.
What Should The Philanthropic Promotional Card Say?
HAPPY (HOLIDAY) DAY!
Join us for a doctor consultation, exam, initial x-rays (if necessary), and a detailed report of findings for a fee of only $40! To honor your visit, we will donate your entire fee of $40 to XYZ Charity!!
(Name of Clinic)
(Address, City, State, Zip)
(Phone Number) | (yourwebsite.com)
Step 3: #
Now is the time to ASK for the referral! Your patients will be as excited about making a referral as you are in asking for it. You have to actually ASK for the referral when you give them these gifts and your patients will be as enthusiastic about giving this gift away to someone as you are about giving it to them. Excitement MATTERS!!
The doctor starts THE ASK by announcing the holiday promotion and then leads the patient to the front desk in order for the gift exchange and ask to take place!
Doctor Script:
(Say this before you dismiss them from the room)“PATIENTNAME, for HOLIDAYNAME this year, we are celebrating our amazing patients and I wanted to thank you for being one of them! And in honor of being such an amazing patient we have a gift not only for you, but for some of your friends or family at our front desk!”
Team Member Script:
(Say this while handing them the first gift) “Happy HOLIDAYNAME! This gift is for you for being such an awesome patient! (Thank you) You’re welcome! (Start handing them the second gift) I also have more with a special offer attached for you to give to a friend or family member. Who do you know that could use our help?”
(If they give you a name)
“Awesome! We have lots of convenient times, when did you want to get him/her scheduled? (If they don’t know a time) No worries, give them their rose and I can check in with you later this week to see when they’d like to get scheduled if they don’t call first!”
(If they don’t give you a name)
“No worries, just take the gift and think about it and we will follow up with you before your next appointment to see who’d like to join you!”
(If they say they’re not wanting to schedule)
“No worries, we totally understand, why don’t you go ahead and talk with POTENTIALPATIENT and I will give you a call next week to see if they are interested in scheduling an appointment!”
Using this verbiage of “I will check in with you next week or at your next appointment” gives you a FREE pass to make the follow up. It also increases the sense of urgency because you have provided an action step with a follow up. So make sure to follow through!
Step 4: #
Follow up is KEY to scheduling additional new patients if we were unable to during the time of the appointment. Always ensure we have received a referral name. This creates an opportunity for us to check in on this potential lead during their next visit or with a phone call one week after their adjustment for wellness patients.
NOTE: Once you are provided a potential lead name, make that note in their file to remember who they referred and WHEN to do the follow up.
Remember, You have to actually ASK for the referral when you give them these gifts. If you don’t ASK for the referral this promotion won’t work.